


Companionship

by Ptolemia



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Arson, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fluff, Other, cute cakes, for a given value of fluff, small bakeries, u kno just ur typical best enemies weekend trip away
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-24 19:55:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4933144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ptolemia/pseuds/Ptolemia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which some sharp words are exchanged, an unexpected apology is given, and being offered the universe still isn't quite enough for Missy. Also, cake.</p><p>Set after episode two of season nine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Companionship

**Author's Note:**

> So, full disclosure, I haven't seen episode three yet... and I'm hoping that whatever happens in it doesn't ruin the timeline for this!
> 
> I have so many feelings about how ambiguous the relationship between the Doctor and the Master is - and how ambiguous it might seem even to them (I imagine anything to do with love gets very very complicated when you live as long and bicker as hard as these two do).
> 
> Also, did anyone else feel really quite sorry for Missy when the Doctor was there shouting out for Clara and ignoring the fact that she was in trouble too?

It's a week or so after the incident on Skaro – or at least, a week from his perspective – that she shows up again. It's several thousand years later for those without the luxury of a TARDIS, not to mention a good million light years distant. And as for her, well, given the vortex manipulator on her wrist and her slightly ruffled hair and scorched skirts, he has a vague suspicion it might only be a few minutes. It would figure. After all, patience has never been her strong suit.

 

So there he is, pulling the TARDIS door shut on another planet successfully saved, and then there _she_ is, perched on the console and gently toying with a lever marked 'EMERGENCY USE ONLY'.

She smirks at him. “Miss me, sugar plum?”

He grunts, pulling his coat off and chucking it over a railing. “You can read, can't you?”

“I flatter myself that I'm vaguely literate, yes.”

“Then why, exactly, are you messing with that lever?” He darts over toward her and jabs his finger emphatically at the sign. “Emergency! Use! Only! You see that?”

“Oh, but it _is_ an emergency.”

He sighs, ambling past her and leaning over to inspect a series of flashing lights to her right. “What kind of emergency?”

She hops off the console and smirks. “Oooh, terrible evil wicked nasty no-good Time Lady loose in the TARDIS. Chase me.”

He grabs her wrist as she goes hopping past without even bothering to look up. “Got you. Will you stop messing with the buttons now, please?”

“Lever, darling,” she says, snatching her wrist away from him with a glare. “It was a lever.”

“Oh, levers, buttons, same thing.” He stares at the flashing lights for a moment longer, then sighs and gives the metal panel next to them a gentle tap with his knuckles. Nothing happens. He smacks the panel slightly harder, and a small trickle of thick smoke belches forth from a nearby vent. He stares at it for a moment, then shrugs. “Ah, its probably fine. Never knew what that bit did anyway."

 

She sighs, loudly, and when that doesn't get his attention she taps his shoulder, rather more sharply than is probably necessary. “Hello, yes, just so you know, this is the part where you react to my presence? You know, shouting, threats, angry hand gestures. Come on, you're normally so good at frowning at me!” She hesitates a moment, then sighs again, flopping dramatically against the nearest wall. “I mean, a 'hello' would suffice. How many millennia of violent arguments and now you ignore me? A girl could be quite hurt by that sort of thing, you know. But I suppose little old me just can't compare to... what was her name? Claudia? Chloe? Chlam-”

“Clara.”

“Oh, _that_ gets a reaction. Well! I can see where I'm not wanted. I'll just see myself out, shall I? You know, I'm more than happy to go back to planning your downfall and plotting your demise and pondering your doom and-”

“Paris!” he says, turning around briskly and clapping his hands together.

“Pardon?”

“How do you feel about it?”

“About what?”

“Paris, big city, nice cakes. Big tower, nowadays. Well, big-ish. For earth. Not a patch on Nocturne 5. Now _that's_ a tower.”

She smiles. “Nocturne 5. Green sunsets. Lovely view. You had a much nicer nose back then, though - this one is just so unfortunate. Doesn't it bother you?”

“And you had a spectacular beard. Times change.”

“So I hear.”

“And... and I actually quite like this nose.”

She winces. “Oh, dear. Really?”

“It's grown on me.”

“Like a tumour.”

 

He chuckles, and breezes past her again, flipping switches on the console as he goes. “Well, it balances out the eyebrows. Small mercies. Now, where was I... ah! Yes. Paris. We should-”

“We?” for the first time she seems genuinely slightly thrown.

“I...” he shrugs, focusing intently on a blank screen in a rather transparent attempt to avoid eye-contact. “Well, it's been a while since we went somewhere. Weekend away. Might be nice.”

“Or we might tear each other's throats out.”

“Ah, well, it wouldn't be a bad way to go. There's some rather nice coffee places around there, too. Do you remember the little one we went to back in, oh, 1893, was it? 1894. No, '93.”

“Wasn't there a fistfight?”

“Yes, but not between us so I'm counting it as a good one.”

 

She sits back up on the console and taps her heels against the metal, humming quietly. After a while she yawns loudly and kicks him in the knee.

“Ouch!”

“Aren't you mad?”

“Well I am now you've done that! Right in the funny-bone.”

“No, no, silly, about Clara.”

“Hmm,” he says.

She leans over, tilting her head between him and the nearest screen so he has to lean round her. “You know, Clara? Daleks? Davros? Any of this ringing a bell? Oh, come on - Skaro? Attempted murder on my part? Well, technically on your part because little old me does _love_ to play games, but... no? Nothing?”

He leans over to pull a lever next to her, and hesitates for a moment as the TARDIS whirrs and creaks its way into the time vortex. Then he leans in slightly to tap a switch, tilting his arm so their shoulders are just touching. “Yes. I am. I am very, very angry.”

“And?”

“I'm sorry.”

“Pardon?!” she splutters.

“Don't make me say it again.”

“My god, no, once is more than enough. The Doctor, apologising! I'm sure it singed your tongue just trying to get the words out. What on earth are you sorry for, though, you funny little man?”

He sighs. “I worry about Clara.”

“Oh, right, back to this. Well. I see how it is.”

“Don't be sharp.”

“You might as well tell the sun not to shine.”

“Point taken.” He sighs, running a hand through his hair. “But... look, I worry about her, you see, because she's human. And very brave and bold and brilliant for it! But they're fragile. They're not like us. Not like you.” He doesn't look up at her, but after a moment he smiles down at the console. “You- I don't think I've ever seen you on your back foot.”

“Now, forgive me if I'm wrong but I do recall dying in your arms at one point...”

“Oh, only to prove a point.” He laughs, and leans in to her a fraction further, tilting his head to rest against her shoulder. “Drama queen.”

She smiles, running a hand through his hair. “Oh, guilty as charged, guilty as charged.”

 

He glances up at her, looking for a moment as though he's about to say something – and then the TARDIS slams to an abrupt halt, flinging the pair of them halfway across the room. They get up, both grumbling furiously, and brush themselves off.

She glances over at the console. “Somebody's jealous.”

He snorts. “Well, I knew you first. Maybe she has reason to be.”

“I say,” she says, raising an eyebrow, “you _are_ forward today, aren't you? It's rather delightful.”

“Well," he mutters, rubbing the back of his neck and gazing vaguely up at the ceiling. "Like I say. It's been a while since we took some time out.”

“Centuries.”

“More, surely.”

“I rather find I lose track after a while. There you are thinking you know how time should work and then you manage to lose a hundred years somewhere or other and you haven't the foggiest when you should be getting yourself a birthday cake.”

“Well. A long time, in any case.”

“A very long time indeed,” she says, with a skip and a hop and then a sudden very sharp glare in his direction “- and you bring me to Paris!”

“What's wrong with Paris?”

She glides up to him, glare melting into a rather more playful smirk. “You _always_ choose Paris,”she says, brushing a speck of dust off his jacket.

“Well, where would you choose?”

“The Universe,” she says, sing-songing it as though she's said it without thinking, and then almost biting her tongue at the end of the word like she wants to take it back.

 

He clears his throat, and steps away. “Well. That, uh. That might be pushing it a little, for a weekend.”

Her mouth settles into a thin line of displeasure, and she shrugs. “Oh, but of course.”

“Missy-”

She rolls her eyes and skips backward away from him, humming something which might be a melody and might just be a nonsensical string of notes, but either way it's very loud and very definite in cutting off the conversation.

He picks his coat up off the rail and puts it on, tailing after her as she skips on out of the TARDIS doors into bright morning sunlight on the cobbled street.

 

He catches up with her halfway down the road, a little breathless. “We can, you know.”

"What?"

"You know. See the universe, all that stuff. Us two."

“Don't be daft. You've got other things to do. Come to think of it, I've got other things to do. Most of them involve plotting the hideous deaths of you and and everyone you love.”

“Well fine, then. The universe in two days. Or us much of it as possible. We could-”

She snorts derisively. “No! Don't be ridiculous.”

“Hmmph.”

They walk in silence for a moment, and then she glances at him side-on, a little smile playing over her lips once more. “But you know, there's a lovely patisserie just down the road from here. Now, the whole universe is rather a lot, but I feel as though tea and cake for two days is perfectly manageable, don't you? I could positively gorge myself silly. Famished. All that running around trying to murder your little friend, that's what's done it! I'm starved.”

“A patisserie... the one with the lilac shutters?”

“Oooh, yes. Lovely mille-feuille.”

He shakes his head. “Doesn't open for another two years.”

“Oh, well, then we'll go to the one that was there before it. Pink shutters! Nice macaroons, very good tea. So sad to see it go. Well, the fire was very pretty. So well-planned, really, I have to congratulate myself on that.”

“Congratulate yourself?”

“Burnt it down. Right down, to a crisp. All those lovely cakes. Such a shame.”

He makes a brisk tutting noise, the sound of an exasperation so old and familiar it's almost become fond. “Well, if you will go setting things on fire...”

“I just had to! Oh, you know how it is. When something's just so lovely and perfect and nice you just want to...” she clutches at the air vaguely for a moment, eyes bright, “To snatch it up and burn it to bits and pieces, just so nobody else can ever have it. Oh, you know. Don't you?”

 

“I'm... familiar with the feeling,” he says, and as they step into the beautiful patisserie with the rose-pink shutters he reaches out and takes her hand. And they both cling on just a little too tight.

 


End file.
